It was a heatwave that basically broke the Northeast. In July 1916, people in New Jersey were desperate. Air conditioning didn't exist yet, so thousands of people—many who had never really gone swimming in the ocean before—piled onto trains to hit the coast. They wanted to cool off. They wanted to escape the city. What they got instead was a series of events so bizarre and terrifying that it literally changed how humans view the ocean forever. Honestly, before the shark attacks of 1916, most Americans thought sharks were harmless, cowardly scavengers. Scholars and scientists actually argued back then that a shark’s jaw wasn't strong enough to snap a human bone.
They were wrong.
Over a span of twelve days, five people were attacked. Four of them died. It wasn't just that it happened; it was where it happened that messed with everyone’s head. It started in the open ocean and ended up miles inland in a freshwater creek. If you’ve ever seen the movie Jaws, you’re basically looking at a fictionalized version of this specific history. Peter Benchley, who wrote the original book, leaned heavily on these real-life accounts.
The First Drop of Blood at Beach Haven
On July 1, 1916, a 25-year-old guy named Charles Vansant was staying at the Engleside Hotel in Beach Haven. He decided to take a quick swim before dinner. He was out there with a Chesapeake Bay Retriever, just enjoying the surf. Suddenly, people on the shore saw a dark fin. They yelled for him to get out. Vansant started swimming back, but the shark caught him in relatively shallow water.
It was brutal.
Alexander Ott, a legendary swimmer and former member of the US Olympic team, actually rushed into the water to help save him. They managed to pull Vansant to the beach, but the shark had stripped the flesh off his left thigh. He bled to death on the manager’s desk of the hotel. You have to understand the context of the time: newspapers barely knew how to report this. Some local papers initially tried to downplay it because they didn’t want to scare off tourists. It’s the classic "Amity Island" trope, but it actually happened in real life.
Five Days Later in Spring Lake
You’d think one death would clear the beaches. It didn’t. People figured it was a fluke. A one-in-a-million accident. On July 6, about 45 miles north in Spring Lake, Charles Bruder was swimming. He was a bell captain at the Essex and Sussex Hotel. He was a strong swimmer, way out past the lifelines, when a shark bit him across the abdomen and legs.
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A couple of lifeguards, Chris Anderson and George White, rowed out in a lifeboat to get him. When they pulled him in, they realized both of his legs were gone below the knee. Bruder died of shock and blood loss before they even hit the sand. This was the moment the panic truly set in. The "man-eating" shark was no longer a myth or a tall tale from sailors. It was a reality.
The Matawan Creek Nightmare: The Impossible Attack
This is where the story goes from a tragedy to something straight out of a horror movie. On July 12, the action shifted away from the ocean beaches. Matawan is a small town, and the creek there is tidal, but it’s definitely not the "ocean." It’s a winding, muddy waterway.
Captain Thomas Cottrell, a local sea captain, was walking across a trolley bridge when he saw a massive gray shape swimming up the creek with the incoming tide. He ran to town to warn people. They laughed at him. They thought he was crazy. How could a shark be in a shallow creek miles from the Atlantic?
A group of local boys were skinny-dipping at a spot called Wyckoff Dock. Among them was 11-year-old Lester Stilwell. He was an epileptic, so when he suddenly disappeared underwater, his friends thought he was having a seizure. Then they saw the blood. The boys ran into town screaming.
A local businessman named Stanley Fisher, who was 24 and well-liked, rushed to the creek. He dove in to find Lester’s body. He actually found it. But as he was bringing the boy's remains back to the surface, the shark attacked him too. Fisher was bitten in the thigh in front of a crowd of horrified onlookers. He was hauled out and put on a train to a hospital in Elizabeth, but he didn't make it.
The madness didn't stop there. Less than an hour later and half a mile downstream, a boy named Joseph Dunn was attacked while swimming with his brother. His brother and some friends managed to pull him away from the shark in a literal tug-of-war. Joseph was the lucky one; he was the only survivor of the five major attacks, though he nearly lost his leg.
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The Great Shark Hunt and the Great Debate
The shark attacks of 1916 sparked a literal war on the ocean. President Woodrow Wilson even held a cabinet meeting about it. The Treasury Department sent the Coast Guard to hunt down the "New Jersey Monster." People were using dynamite in the water. They were using giant steel hooks baited with chunks of mutton.
Two days after the Matawan attacks, a taxidermist named Michael Schleisser was fishing in Raritan Bay. He caught an 8.5-foot shark that nearly sank his small boat. When he opened it up, he reportedly found 15 pounds of human flesh and bones in its stomach.
Was it a Great White or a Bull Shark?
This is the big controversy. For decades, the "Schleisser shark"—which was a juvenile Great White—was blamed for all the deaths. Most scientists at the time, including those from the American Museum of Natural History, pointed the finger at the Great White.
But modern researchers aren't so sure.
The Matawan Creek attacks happened in low-salinity water. Great Whites usually can't handle freshwater for long. Bull sharks, however, have specialized kidneys that let them hang out in rivers and creeks for ages. Many marine biologists, like George Burgess, have argued that while a Great White might have done the ocean attacks, a Bull Shark was likely the culprit in the creek. Others argue that it was an exceptionally high tide, making the creek salty enough for a Great White to survive the trip. We’ll probably never know for sure.
Why This Still Matters Today
Before 1916, there was a huge amount of scientific hubris. Experts like Frederic Lucas, the director of the American Museum of Natural History, had written articles stating there was no record of a shark ever attacking a human in temperate waters. This event was a massive reality check.
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It also gave birth to the "rogue shark" theory. This is the idea that a single shark can develop a taste for human flesh and move along a coastline hunting people. Most modern scientists actually think the rogue shark theory is mostly nonsense—sharks don't usually "target" humans—but in 1916, it was the only explanation that made sense to people.
Lessons From the 1916 Crisis
If you're heading to the beach, it's easy to get paranoid about this stuff. But context is everything. Millions of people swim every year without seeing a fin. However, the shark attacks of 1916 did teach us some very specific things about shark behavior and human safety.
- Tidal Creeks are deceptive: Just because you aren't in the "deep blue sea" doesn't mean large marine life can't get to you. Tidal rivers are basically highways for predators.
- The "Heatwave" Factor: When it’s abnormally hot, more people go in the water, and more fish move toward the shore. It's a numbers game. More humans + more sharks = higher chance of a bad interaction.
- Don't ignore the locals: Captain Cottrell warned the town of Matawan, and they ignored him because they thought they knew better.
- The "Jaws" Effect is real: This event created the blueprint for how we fear the ocean. It turned the shark from a biological curiosity into a cinematic monster.
To really understand the impact of the shark attacks of 1916, you have to look at the change in legislation and beach safety. Lifeguard stands became standard. Shark nets were experimented with. Above all, the scientific community finally admitted they didn't know everything about the natural world.
If you want to dig deeper into the actual documents from that era, you should check out the digital archives of the New York Times or the Philadelphia Inquirer from July 1916. The language they use is fascinating—they call the shark a "sea wolf" and a "monster." It’s a glimpse into a world that was just beginning to realize how little it knew about the creatures living just a few yards off the sand.
You can also visit Matawan today. There’s a marker near the creek. It’s a quiet place now, but the geography hasn’t changed much. Standing on the bank of that narrow, muddy water, it's easy to see why nobody believed a shark could be there. It looks like a place for catfish, not 8-foot predators. That’s probably the most enduring lesson of 1916: nature doesn't always stay where we think it belongs.
Next time you're at the Jersey Shore, maybe take a look at the history of the specific beach you’re on. Many of these towns have small local museums with clippings from that summer. It's a wild, sobering way to connect with the past before you head back into the waves.